Selling Yourself: Wait, What?! Personal Branding and What It Can Do For You

I might start off by clarifying what I mean by “selling yourself” and then progress on to explaining what personal branding even means. Personal branding is when a person offers a service or skill that you as a consumer can benefit from, so they need to market their image in order to sell those services. Well that was a lot of mumbo jumbo! Did I lose you?

Let’s simplify…YOU…are the Brand!

Let’s start with an example. Let’s say you are a fitness guru. Working out is an obsession. Diet and health are your thing. You’ve never eaten a Cheeto in your life! Now you have begun to train other people who want to get fit and look just like you! People will even pay you to share with them what you do to look so buff or hopefully one day teach them how to put their Cheetos down!

BOOM! There you have it!

YOU are the brand! You become the Beyonce of fitness but we all know you didn’t wake up like this and why let people imitate for free when you can make a dollar to keep looking that good!

So now you know what personal branding is so let’s get into who can use it and benefit from it. Imagine you are a musician with a voice like an angel but no one knows who you are.

You Sir or Madam need personal branding!

What good is talent if no one knows who you are or what you can do?! If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, I’m sure you’ve heard Mr Wonderful or the other sharks ask “What makes you different? How is what your doing different than the other 10 people I’ve seen doing it? I want to invest in you!” THIS is why YOU need to stand out and be noticed. If people like you, then people are more likely to buy your product. What happens when the product is ok but we don’t like the mascot? Let’s just say I don’t eat at Subway anymore.

Let’s use another example. How many famous chef’s can you think of? I’m sure quite a few! Some of them are quite angry! When a chef becomes a household brand, you’ll go to wherever they are cooking and serving. For the average chef, their friends and family told their friends and their families “Hey come eat my nephews burgers!” That might pay the bills for a while but what can personal branding do?

Well let’s look at the Wahlburgers chain. We all know who Mark and Donnie are. In fact I’m sure you might have even been in your bathroom mirror dancing to Hanging Tough praying your Mom doesn’t walk in and film it. Luckily we couldn’t afford a home video recording device….Moving on!

My point is simply this: Marketing yourself pays off and in a big way!

You know what personal branding is, you can think of people who can use it and now you are gaining knowledge on why it is important. Let me add ANOTHER layer of knowledge by explaining HOW you can use it. Social media is the absolute key. If you live on this planet and a computer is nearby then you or someone you know is using social media right now. Wow! That’s a lot of people!

Millions of people log in to facebook just to take a gander at where Suzie Neighbor bought those way too high heels and where Mr. Joe Youknow is eating for lunch today.

Let’s say Joe goes to check in at Mr. Phil’s Burger Joint because he is dying to rave about the services. Uh oh! Burger Joint isn’t on social media! Neither is Mr. Phil! Oh the humanity! Joe has 4,000 friends he wanted to tell! Imagine what that can do for your restaurant when all of Joe’s friends tell more of their friends what a wonderful place you have and encourage people to stop by.

That’s grade A PR my friend and all you had to do was open a Facebook page with your brand attached.

Personal branding is Amazing! Luckily we have begun adding this as a service we offer too and we absolutely LOVE doing it! Let us know if personal branding has worked for you or check out our services page to sign up with us and get started today! Thanks for reading and be sure to like and SHARE share SHARE with YOUR friends and family too!! Stay tuned for next week's blog or don't miss it by subscribing!